Mimico Creek Pedestrian Bridge

Toronto

IN SHORT

Toronto Department of Parks and Culture commissioned the Mimico Creek Bridge project as part of an extension to the Waterfront Trail along the shores of Lake Ontario. Located westwards from the city, the site is close to Toronto's famous Humber River Arch Bridge. The Mimico Creek Bridge with its single inclined arch proposes an elegant design counterpoint to an existing landmark and does so at a modest scale, while contributing a memorable new element of its own to the site and its surrounding areas. Designed for pedestrians and cyclists, the Mimico Creek Bridge spans 44 meters (144 feet) with a 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) wide deck.

The exceptionally light superstructure, which weighs only 50 tons, was designed in such a way that it could be prefabricated off-site as four separate pieces and later assembled into a single unit on site after being lowered into place by a crane. The foundation of the bridge includes steel tube piles socketed into the underlying bedrock on the side. The main elements of the steel superstructure are a 600 millimeter diameter torsion tube, a 200 millimeter diameter edge tube and a 200 millimeter diameter arch tube. These structural steel elements are connected by means of floor beams, bracing members and struts, using a combination of welded and bolted connections.